Fourth of July -- reflection
and renewal
By ARTHUR I. CYR
Scripps Howard News Service

July 04, 2007
Wednesday

The Fourth of July celebrates community, local as well as national.
Parades featuring people in uniform -- scouts, firefighters and
police as well as the military and others -- traditionally are
a fixture. Military uniforms remind us of the role of war in
our history -- and our present.

From ancient times, parades
have been vital to the reintegration of warriors into society.
War is profoundly disruptive and disturbing as well as dangerous.
Even the rare man who finds combat invigorating and rewarding
is in severe need of an honoring welcome after the killing ends.

Homer, chronicler of the Trojan
War, was extremely sensitive to this. The great classic is presented
in two parts. "The Iliad" focuses on the fighting and
related interplay involving Greeks and Trojans; "The Odyssey"
describes the very long voyage home of Greek leader Ulysses and
his men. They traverse allegorical geography, struggling to put
the horrors of killing, and the dangers of being killed, behind
them.

Gen. George S. Patton Jr.,
a very great American combat leader, was extremely mindful of
this dimension. He and Gen. James Doolittle, who led the first
air raid on Tokyo, were featured in a special ceremony in the
Los Angeles Coliseum after the surrender of Nazi Germany.

Patton celebrated the accomplishments of the U.S. Third Army
in the victorious drive across Europe. In honoring his troops,
he stressed in particular the 40,000 who lost their lives in
that final year of the war. Patton made such statements regularly
in the few months remaining until his own death.

Such confirmation is particularly
important for warriors representing modern democracies. Our egalitarian
ethos and efforts to abide by the rule of law contrast starkly
with the traditional martial spirit.

In World War II, Allied troops
were often welcomed warmly by peoples liberated from Axis occupation.
Understandably, our media gave special emphasis to this dimension.
The Korean War created very strong bonds between the United States
and the people as well as the very effective military of South
Korea. The first Gulf War liberated an oppressed population.

The Vietnam and Iraq wars have
been different. During Vietnam, military personnel were often
discouraged from discussing the subject with civilians. Opposition
to the war became hostility to our own military. There was no
collective welcome home. Many middle-aged vets of that war suffer
without a Ulysses, troubled -- and troublesome.

The Iraq War has evolved differently,
without this problem. A recent trip to Washington provided a
reminder of the visibility of the uniformed military, especially
on public transportation.

However, the constant rotation
of personnel back to Iraq is unfair as well as counterproductive.
Enormous psychological strains are added to physical dangers,
and families suffer heavily. Clearly, our current political leaders
are putting their own interests far above the needs of our troops.

July Fourth is not a day for
in-depth foreign-policy discussion, but is particularly appropriate
for recognizing and honoring veterans, individually as well as
collectively, wherever and whenever you find them.

Please also encourage them
to run for public office. We won the Cold War in part because
members of the "Greatest Generation" who served in
the military also served in government. Every U.S. president
from Harry Truman through George H.W. Bush was a veteran.

What Washington needs above
all is the sort of sensible realism such men and women bring
to policy.

Arthur I. Cyr is Clausen
Distinguished Professor at Carthage College and author of "After
the Cold War" (NYU Press and Palgrave/Macmillan).
He can be reached at acyr(at)carthage.edu